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About this Book

Reflections for the Unfolding Year is a collection of addresses given by Alan Wilkinson. Roving over subjects from apartheid to Lent to the ever-evolving image of Mary, he offers a compassionate response to some of the most painful subjects of the last hundred years, as well as a thoughtful reflection on the sacraments of the Church of England, what they have meant to our ancestors and what they mean to us today. Delving into troubling questions about doubt, repentance and what it means when God appears to be silent in times of crisis, he draws on sources from all walks of life in order to express how Anglicans feel about fundamental issues such as grief, hope and grace, as well as, most potently, their longing for God.

Alan Wilkinson relates stories about the Church – its bishops and its believers – with rueful good humour and thoughtfulness, leading the reader through more than half a century of his ministry in Portsmouth and elsewhere. His portrait of the Church of England showcases both the ordinary and the extraordinary; the prosaic and the poetic. Through his fluent pen, we come to understand more of the lives of the people in the Church, such as Desmond Tutu, William Temple and Bill Sargent, who have made it what it is today: catholic, reformed and liberal.

Contents

Preface

I. Reflections on the Christian Year1. Advent: The End and Endings2. Advent: Judgement3. Advent: Penitence4. Advent: Mary the Pilgrim5. How the Christmas Story Developed6. Preparing for Christmas7. Epiphany: The Baptism of Jesus8. Epiphany: The Wedding at Cana9. Epiphany: Candlemass10. A Pattern for Lent11. Lent: Desert and Ash12. Lent: Paying Attention13. Lent: Dying to Live14. Holy Week: Maundy Thursday15. Good Friday According to St Mark16. Good Friday According to St Luke17. Good Friday According to St Matthew18. Good Friday According to St John19. Easter: Seeing and Believing20. Easter: The Resurrection of the Body21. Easter: The Community of the Resurrection22. Easter: Ascension Day23. Pentecost24. Trinity Sunday25. Corpus Christi: Five Titles for the Eucharist26. The Transfiguration (6 August)27. Our Lady in Harvest (15 August)28. All Saints (1 November)29. Christ the King (Sunday before Advent)

Extracts

About the Author

Alan Wilkinson is an Anglican priest and the former Diocesan Theologian for Portsmouth, as well as the former Chaplain of St Catharine's College Cambridge and Principal of Chichester Theological College. He has taught previously at the universities of Cambridge, Bristol and Portsmouth and for the Open University, and now lives in Chichester with his wife, Fenella. He is the author of The Church of England and the First World War (reprinted 2014 by the Lutterworth Press), an in-depth exploration of the ambiguous role played by the Anglican Church in the war and the pastoral issues which arose from its unprecedented horrors.